To say I’m frustrated about my therapy situation would be putting it mildly. I’m coming up to a horrific anniversary and I have to admit I’m scared as to how things are going to work out. I tried to see if I could negotiate with my therapist’s office so that I could get another appointment in the interim before the insurance kicks over in January.

I have $100 outstanding on my bill. They want me to pay off $50 before I can book an appointment. Then at the appointment I have to pay the $70 plus $25 off the remainder of the balance. Well, unfortunately for me we can’t do that. I’ve been paying the bill off at $15 a month and that’s been pushing it. I figured I might be able to swing the $70 fee for the appointment then and there, but apparently that’s not good enough for the office manager. They don’t want me to get in over my head. Well, gee, that would be nice…IF they’d thought of that before they let me book two appointments after my insurance had run out that I had to pay out of pocket for.

I’m so annoyed. Especially because my therapist had said that she would still see me despite the outstanding bill. I’m not wanting to schedule appointments EVERY week and rack up $280 a month worth of bills. I just want one or two appointments at the most; but no, not unless I admit myself to the hospital.

I really dislike our insurance. I think I’m also frustrated because I thought that the parity bill being passed would mean that this was over, but the parity legislation doesn’t activate until NEXT year.

In the mean time I’m waiting to hear on the disability appeal, and to see if we can get food stamps; and I feel like we’re just going around and around in circles.

I’ve been having a hard time with things lately, and I realized a couple of days ago that I”m coming up for the ten year anniversary of when certain things happened to me.

For a long time I felt that around Halloween of 1998 I was possessed and didn’t overcome that possession until around January or February of 1999 with the help of my room mate, who later became my girlfriend, who is now “fondly” referred to as my psycho ex.

Now, I’m honestly not sure what to think about the possession. I’ve done a lot of spiritual work and so it wouldn’t be unheard of for it to have happened. However when I did work with entity attachment and release, rather than being taken to the time I thought I was taken to January of 2001 and found that my grandfather had attached to me to protect me from a spirit fragment of my “psycho ex”.

Perhaps I did get possessed, perhaps there was some kind of disassociation caused by something going on, where I had a stress-fracture and then it healed itself, after a fashion.

Hopefully when I’m able to go back with my therapist we’ll finally be able to get things sorted out. We were getting ready to look at these things when my insurance ran out…

I was so happy to find this out today. I’ve been writing my congressmen several times over the past few weeks, and I was grateful to find out that both the Democratic AND Republican senators for my state were supportive of the parity act, and apparently it was passed as a rider to the bail-out bill! I’m so relieved. Perhaps in the next year this means I’ll actually be able to go to therapy more than 20 times a year!

Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on the Mental Health Parity legislation that was approved by the House and signed into law today: “Today, the House acted in a bipartisan way to pass the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act with the aim of addressing the challenges felt by Americans on Main Street. “Among those many challenges is the fact that almost every American family has to grapple with mental illness at some point. “By including the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act in this essential legislation, we are requiring that illness in the brain be treated just like illness anywhere else in the body for insurance purposes. This is helping to end discrimination against those who seek treatment for mental illness. Simply put, it will save lives. “We owe a great deal of thanks to the champions of this bipartisan legislation, Congressman Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island and Congressman Jim Ramstad of Minnesota. Through their outstanding work, the Congress has given hope and help to the millions of American families dealing with mental illness and addiction.”
SOURCE Office of the Speaker of the House

From Pelosi Statement.

We’ll see how this goes now, but for right now I’m going to write my senators and thank them for their support of this bill.

Things have been a bit hectic here lately, we were hit by Tropical Storm Fay and while she seemed like she would be not too bad she did knock our power out on and off for several days which made things like working at the computer a bit difficult.

We’re also in the process of doing some building on our residence…which is a bit messed up by torrential rain, as you would imagine.

I do have some updates on my therapy situation. I haven’t been back to the therapist since the phone call I received, however we have spoken on the phone several times and I need to call her today. She’s been able to get permission to knock $55 off the cost of my visits, and is currently on the warpath with regards to their financial department because the “nice lady” who called to let me know that I had run out of visits, also called and essentially complained that I had only sent $10 off the bill, even though, she was the one who told me that as long as I was sending something even if it was as little as $5 I wouldn’t be sent to collections.

She told me that if I have not paid off one of the visits worth of money (which would be another $115) by September 3rd then when my next appointment comes up I won’t be able to see my therapist. As it is I’m probably going to be canceling that appointment because that’s around the first of the month when we pay our mortgage, and that week we’re lucky to have ANY extra money for even groceries depending on how much over time is on my husband’s pay check. I was in a snarky mood so given she had said it like this, “Just so you know if you don’t pay off $125 of the bill before the 3rd you can’t see the therapist,” I informed her, “Well, just so YOU know, my therapist is working something out, but if she isn’t able to I won’t be coming to any more appointments until January when the insurance kicks over, but I will be trying to pay $10 every two weeks until then and extra when I can.”

My therapist, however, went a bit on the warpath. I say a bit, because she’s generally a mild-mannered, soft-spoken woman and she got the loudest I’ve ever heard when she said, “That’s ridiculous!” Apparently there is someone paying $5 a month on a fairly large bill and still being seen, and she was also upset because $110 should have come off my bill given the $55 reduction she got on her appointment fee, and from the statement I got right before I sent my payment in there had been no fee reductions.

I was supposed to call her yesterday but I forgot. My memory sucks at times ;_; so I have a note in several places to call her today.

We’ll see what happens. I won’t be able to see her every week paying out of pocket, but I may at least be able to have a couple of visits in the interim while we wait for the insurance to reset, which to us is better than starting over elsewhere.

I’m not even sure if we’ve lost her or not, it just feels like it right now. Apparently my husband’s insurance only covers 20 mental health visits per year, and I met those in July and had two more appointments after that, so I now owe the therapists office $250.

So, joy…at $125 a visit there’s no way I can afford to have one visit a week as my therapist wants. I’m hoping that she’ll be able to cut a deal but I’m also fearful that she won’t be able to do that because the economy is hurting everyone, and she won’t be able to afford that, then again me giving her something is better than losing me entirely, aside from the fact that I’m hopeful she really does want to help me aside from the financial aspect, but it’s hard to trust that things will work out.

I’ve been screwed over so many times by so many people, and we were just starting to all be able to trust her and talk to her, and now this. I know it’s not my therapists fault. I know she didn’t do this. It’s the insurance company…and I feel partially responsible for not thinking to check that there was a limitation on visits…but…argh. It’s just a horrible situation, and I know I’m not the first who has been through this, but it seems so stupid that there’s such little emphasis placed on taking care of mental health situations. One appointment a month is nowhere near enough to fix the issues that I have, and now I’ll have none until January unless something can be sorted out.

or Blue Cross Blue Shield and their brand of madness!

I found out today that I can’t have any more therapy sessions until next year. Well, in theory I could but I can’t afford $500 per month for therapy when we’re barely making ends meet as it is.

Why is this the case? Because Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida has it said on most of their plans (according to the girl I talked to on the phone) that 20 visits per year is all that should be necessary for someone seeing a therapist. I guess they don’t take anything into account more severe than dealing with a death in the family, or being disgruntled with your job, otherwise you’re just up the creek.

They tell me that I can appeal the two visits I already had over my twenty before my therapists office saw fit to let me know (apparently there was a staff change to blame for this miscommunication) well tell that to my wallet that now owes $250 and only has $16 to last me until next week.

I can’t switch plans. I can have my therapist write to them and explain that because I’m a Multiple I NEED more than one visit per month, just like because I’m allergic I can’t have ambien but need lunesta, however they view the pill situation medically necessary and will make an exception, but the fact that the therapy is helping me to function in normal society and be able to return as a productive member of the workforce in the future is not something they consider valuable or necessary.

I guess I just better cling to the hope that I can actually qualify for disability and then may be able to get the rest of the appointments covered under Medicaid otherwise I’m screwed until January, and after then will only be able to go once per month.

There’s a chance that the office will be able to set up a sliding scale of payments, but other than that I’m out of luck, and even with that I may be down to one visit per month, because we’re pretty broke.

Well, not quite, I just couldn’t resist the title.
The last therapy appointment I had, Kiddy went to. I never put her in the list of “active alters” because she wasn’t. She has been out a grand total of once, as far as I can tell, since we found out that we were going to have a baby, and that was…three years ago August.

Strangely enough she seems to be a bit…integral to system functioning as a whole, despite what she thought. I (and this is Abby talking for clarification) wasn’t sure. When we found out we were pregnant it’s safe to say that there was a Mini-Crisis. I mean, aside from the fact that at the time we really didn’t fully know what was going on with us mentally. We just thought we had a real easy time channeling facets and other lives, and we kinda went, okay, if all of these are other lives than everyone who has a hard time with children, doesn’t like children, or is really, really angry it’s probably best if you go back behind your little doors now and don’t bother us again, and Kiddy went, well, hey I hate kids, I can’t deal with kids, and I have a hideous temper so yeah, I’m gone. Or as she put it in therapy, “Well, shit. Bye!”

But apparently she’s actually been around since I was about seven…eight…some thing else that we as a whole didn’t know.

So, this is now the third alter who has been to therapy or who has spoken in therapy, the second being Sarah (one of the Littles) and the first being me, who is mainly Front and therefore goes most of the time by default, because I AM DEFAULT. Woot!

Last night, Kiddy met our son for the first time. She’s seen him before, but he was sleeping and therefore “okay” but it seems like the meeting went pretty well. It happened last night because my husband was home and able to mediate, but things did go well. The only one who had a meltdown was the child, and that was really only a mini-meltdown, and Kiddy dealt with that okay. I think she was actually more scared than anything. She was less sure how to deal with his affection than she was his tantrum, but I think that might be because anger is something she can understand. He peed on his shirt, he was upset that the shirt was taken. He got a new shirt, he was happy. Hugs…that’s something else.

All in all these past few weeks have brought a lot of useful information and insight…and it seems like Kiddy is also becoming or re-becoming part of co-consciousness. She’s also answered a couple of emails in our support group, but this I would say is good, because it’s better to deal with the issues that cause her to have the anger, and let her process things herself than to just keep her buried under the rug (or locked in her “room) as the case may be.

As I was saying in a forum post earlier, short-term is okay…but long-term is better, and what happened when we were in crisis that was definitely a Short Term solution, and that term has run out now.

Ami was finally able to sort out a nifty way to use the picture that we commissioned from DuskFire Art so we now have it here and on our livejournal, although slightly different on each, but the same theme.

Things are looking good, even if we do say so ourselves.

I’m hoping to write more here from now on, but I make no promises, it’s so easy for blogs to get forgotten and fall by the way side. We’re hoping now that we only have three it might be a bit easier (although that’s not strictly true if you count the livejournal and the insanejournal).

Tomorrow is therapy day. We haven’t had therapy in two weeks because our therapist was on vacation. Last time we had therapy she said she would perhaps like to talk to Debbi who seems to be connected with the Littles or that she would like to talk to those who voluntarily left when we found out that we were pregnant because she wonders if they’re the reason that I have such issues with anger. But I don’t know. I think perhaps I will let Kiddy out so that she can dress in a way that she’s comfortable and maybe that will help for her to talk to the therapist…but I can’t be sure. She’s the only one that I think might remotely feel up to talking to the therapist…

Then also we’ve had some issues this past week because a close friend lost a relative to suicide, and things have been very glitchy, so maybe that will come up. Some times I wish the sessions lasted longer than an hour.

My therapist told me an interesting analogy about my body the other day that I thought I would share. She said that the body is like a car, and while I’m sure people have heard that analogy before. She said that for multiples it was like the body is the company car and singletons a car that they own.

The singleton takes care of their car, they make sure it gets the oil changes, they fill it with gas, take it for tune-ups, take out the trash, but a multiple it’s like the company car, where everyone borrows it to get to a meeting, but they don’t take out the trash, or fill it up because they figure the next person will get to that, and they figure it doesn’t matter about the oil changes because the company will sort that out.

We were talking about my problems with sticking to exercise and diet. I have these ideas that I’ll get with an exercise program, but then I just flake out, or they never get done because of that one day that so-n-so is out and doesn’t so the next day when some one else is out they’re all, “Well, they didn’t do it, why should I?”

…and as thus was kinda interesting. We were telling E about the discussion going on about Debbi and the roll call that we’ve been doing, and she found it interesting that we would take it upon ourselves to do one, and in amongst that was complimenting me on the fact that I’m being more firm with the munchkin but also said that I continue to surprise her because I take things in stride and have such “good humor” and “can joke” about my mental situation. She said some of the things that I describe would have others in freak-outs, and I told her that I’ve had my share of freak-outs to be sure.

College held a lot of freak outs and since college did too, but my last major freak out other than when I found out I was pregnant and tried to clamp everything down was the Yule after the munchkin was born.

We were driving to the airport to pick up relatives and SO and I were talking and he was saying about the discussion he’d had with me the previous night where it didn’t seem like me or Max or anyone he recognized and I didn’t remember it all. This was also around the time of the ceiling armadillo, and he was going “Why are you freaking out about this?” and I’m going, “Because I don’t remember it happening!” and he’s going, “but you and Max switch out all the time,” and I’m going, “Yes, but I remember that, and if I don’t remember Max fills me in. I have no idea who that was and Max has no idea who that was, it’s a HUGE BLANK SPACE THAT’S LIKE COLLEGE ALL OVER AGAIN.”

E was saying that the amount of control and awareness I have with my system is something she’s never encountered before. She says that next session she would either like to see if Debbi is willing to talk to her because Debbi is connected to the littles or if anyone who voluntarily abdicated when the pregnancy was discovered would like to talk to her that would be good, because they obviously have ties into the anger-issue and the fear of hurting the munchkin issues. She says she’s also interested to work out if there’s something major in childhood that caused the separations or if it’s more tied into the “channeling” and the regression work that I’ve done. She said normally people with systems as large as mine have had multiple traumas in childhood, but since I only seem to have had a couple she wonders if I was pretty static at 2-4 growing up but then the things I did in college played on the fracture that was already there instead.

We like her. She’s very open-minded and very smart